


Young Lady, You're Scaring Me

by WrathoftheStag (Mwuahna)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: All About Larissa, Character Study, F/M, Family Dynamics, Friends as Family, Lardo is the Queen, Love, You do not fuck with Lardo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 18:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11492526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mwuahna/pseuds/WrathoftheStag
Summary: The life of Larissa Duan.  A brief little character study.





	Young Lady, You're Scaring Me

Her first memory is twirling. She is twirling and dancing and it is at her parents’ party. Her dress billows up and down, and she throws her arms up in the air getting lost in the music and the movement of her dress. Her long beautiful summer dress.

Her parents love to invite all of their friends over for music and food. So much food. _Nem ran, banh khot_ , huge platters of _bun bo nam bo, ga nuong_. Her _bà_ gives her a _banh bao_ and tells her to behave.

She laughs, and taking a bite of the soft steamed bun, runs barefoot through the kitchen, out the back door, through the crowd of uncles standing on the porch smoking, and into the backyard. 

She spins and laughs and looks up to the sky where the moon hangs heavy and pregnant, and it is that moment that she is in love with life and all its mysteries -- even if she doesn’t quite understand it all, but right then and there, four-year-old Larissa Duan decides to take life by the horns.

 

**+**

 

She walks into her 6th grade classroom on this particular October morning with a skinned knee and a hole in her jeans where only a few minutes ago there was none. She wipes her face and sits down at the desk with a small sniffle.

Moments later, Bobby O’Malley comes in and sits down quietly, pressing his shirt sleeve to his nose as the blood still drips slowly. 

Every day walking to school Bobby sees Larissa across the street, taking the same route. Purple backpack and a steely look on her face. Every day after school he sees her walking home. He thinks she’s cute, he wants to talk to her but doesn’t know how. He’s an idiot so on that particular October morning, he says, “Hey, Larissa! Ching-chong ching-chong!” 

She turns and looks at him, drops her backpack, crosses the street and jumps Bobby O’Malley, pushing him to the ground and punching him in the nose once. She stands up and pointing a finger at him says, “If you ever, ever make fun of me like that ever again, I will beat the shit out of you and this time, for real.” 

All the kids stop to watch. No one expects this. And yet no one is surprised.

Bobby O’Malley falls in love with Larissa that day.

 

**+**

 

“Art?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely no.”

Larissa is at the kitchen table, her mother, father, and grandmother sit flanking her. All eyes on her.

“Where did we go wrong?” her mother asks.

“What are you going to do, Larissa? Artist? How do they make money? How can you have a good future?”

“ _Cha_ , when have I ever not accomplished what I’ve set my mind to?”

Larissa’s father exchanges glances with his wife.

“But art, Larissa. What about medicine? Or business?”

“That’s not who I am. That is who you want me to be,” she replies quietly. 

She looks to her grandmother. Her _bà_ who has always supported her. Always. She and Larissa lock eyes, and then her grandmother speaks.

“If she has been offered money to go to this school, if they want her, then she cannot break that promise. She will lose face if she does.”

Larissa’s parents look at her and already know it is pointless to argue. 

Larissa will do what she wants, when she wants. Strong-willed as the day is long. And a small part of them is proud. They love their daughter and resign themselves to having an artist in the family. 

“You scare me sometimes, Larissa, but we trust you,” her mother says.

“Good luck painting houses,” her cousin Samuel yells from the living room.

“ _Câm miệng_ , Samuel,” she calls out and smiles.

 

**+**

 

“Do you know anything about hockey?” Coach Hall asks.

“You try to get the black thingy into the net, right?”

“The black thingy? Really, kid?”

Larissa nods and Coach Hall can’t help but laugh.

“I’m hard working, organized, catch on quickly, and can corral a group of boys into submission and get them where they need to be. I have a lot of boy cousins! The rest, well I’ll pick up as we go along.”

 _Moxy_. That’s the word that Coach thinks of when he looks at her.

“Fine. You got the job, Duan.”

When she meets the team, she knows she has her work cut out for her. 

She’s expecting a bunch of dude bros that she’ll have to tolerate at most. What Larissa isn’t planning on is finding another family.

“You’re pretty ballsy, Lardo. Anyone ever tell you that?” Adam says one evening after a game of flip cup.

“Not in the last hour,” she replies with a wink.

Jack becomes one of her closest friends and confidants -- they speak about love and life and the meaning of it all. Their pseudo intellectual conversations often take on real meaning and depth, pleasing both Lardo and Jack. 

Ransom and Holster become the big brothers she never had. She rides on their shoulders, dances in their arms, cleans up their puke, and is cleaned up in return.

And Shitty. Well… she smiles when she’s alone in her dorm room, curled up in her bed thinking about him. What she whispers to Ducky in the middle of the night stays with Ducky. She knows he’s good at keeping those kind of secrets.

Lardo travels to Kenya and sleeps under large moons, eats the world around her, throws herself into the culture with a full heart and open eyes. During a day trip to Lamu Island in Nairobi, she swims in warm waters and memorizes the colors of the skies above and the grasses beneath her feet. She paints them with fervor and adoration.

She misses the Haus, her boys, and thinks of Shitty… often. But her life delights her, and she lives in the here and now. She kisses both boys and girls after drinking cheap beer and dancing in hot rooms filled with other college students.

And when Bitty comes along -- another kindred spirit -- her family becomes even more complete.

 

**+**

 

Sometimes, very late at night, Larissa likes to climb out onto the reading room. Barefoot and free, she dances to the music in her head. This dance is for no one, just herself. And she loves it. 

She climbs back inside the Haus and into her room before anyone can notice.

 

**+**

 

The trees are turning red, and the leaves consider falling the ground. Larissa pulls into the driveway and glances over at Shitty who sits uncharacteristically quiet in the passenger seat. An enormous fruit basket balanced on his knees.

“You okay there?”

Shitty nods. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you look like you’re about to puke into that basket, dude.”

“I just... Shit. You know, my entire life I’ve never given a fuck what anyone thought of me.”

Larissa laughs because she knows it’s true, but she also loves this ridiculous person sitting next to her who is nervous about meeting her family.

“But, I want them to like me. You know? Fuck, this is stressful!” Shitty says flinging his arms up in the air.

She turns off her car. 

“Look, my cousins are going to give you shit. My grandmother will feed you till you burst but your ass better keep eating, and once you start talking about Harvard and law school I guarantee you my parents will fawn all over you.”

Shitty nods nervously, because he loves her more than he can say, and can’t help feeling ridiculous and not enough, because who could ever be good enough for this radiant, brilliant, force of nature?

They walk inside and take their shoes off at the door. 

And in that moment Shitty feels fine, because Lardo is both fire and ice, she is fearlessness and fury, and he knows she would slay a dragon for anyone she loved. Shitty feels safe, because no one -- no one in all in the world, would possibly ever fuck with Larissa Duan.

She smiles and leads him inside the house.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Lardo so much. I've been wanting to write a character study on her for sometime now, and this morning I heard the song [Young Lady, You're Scaring Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3yqgRyHkSU) and the title just struck me as something her parents -- or even Shitty -- would say to her. The song is nothing about her, I just liked the title. So I sat down and wrote this. A love song to Lardo.
> 
> bà = grandmother  
> cha = dad  
> Câm miệng = Shut up
> 
> All characters belong to Ngozi. ;)
> 
> For angryspaceravenclaw who is such a lovely person! A little something for you. <3
> 
> Come and say hi on Tumblr. I'm [Wrath of the Stag](http://wrathofthestag.tumblr.com/).


End file.
